What to Do If Your Parents Are Your Source of Career Conflict

When people talk about work-family conflict, the mental image we see is often one of a harried mom or dad trying to get to day-care pickup on time, or a professional couple arguing about whose travel schedule should take priority.

But in my role as a consultant and teacher, I often hear about another kind of work-family conflict: the tension emanating from parental needs or expectations that are incongruent with their children’s own values and plans. Lately I’ve been hearing business professionals at various stages in life, from college students to mid-career executives, talk more about their mothers and fathers than their spouses and children as sources of career conflict. Here is a small sampling of what I’ve heard:

“My parents have always made me feel that my accomplishments fall short of expectations; I’m a disappointment to them and this undermines my confidence in choosing a career direction of my own.”

“My parents expect me to marry a particular (kind of) person, even if committing to that potential spouse would cut against my career goals.”

“My parents insist I live in a particular geographic location, but this will seriously inhibit my career options and future growth.”

“I feel obliged to care for my parents in their old age, but I cannot figure out how to coordinate the allocation of these responsibilities with my siblings; the resulting stress is a major distraction from my efforts to focus on work.”

“I’m afraid to tell my parents I’m gay. This fear of ostracism is spilling over to my work as I’m inhibited about bringing my unique contributions to our company.”

While both Millennials and older workers are influenced by issues arising from their families of origin, the former are more so. We saw evidence of this trend in a longitudinal study comparing the Class of 1992 with the Class of 2012. For example, Millennials were more likely than those in the Class of 1992 to report that their family of origin was a major source of satisfaction in their lives and that most of the important things that happen to them involve the family from which they came.

Though the particular focus of parent-child clashes shifts as one gets older, such collisions do remain primary sources of worry and work-family conflict. The anxieties and guilt that can form the basis of parent-child relationships, even fairly late in life, can inhibit career progress. If any of this sounds familiar – if you would like to switch careers but for your parents’ disappointment, or if you would like to move to a new city or country to follow your dream but for guilt about abandoning your parents – I suggest trying an exercise we’ve done with thousands of people in scores of Total Leadership workshops.

The core of the activity is having a series of what we call “stakeholder dialogues”; these are conversations with the most important people in your life – at work, at home, and in your community – about mutual expectations. The goal is to clarify, to find out what they (your stakeholders) really think, not what you think they think. Prior to undertaking these dialogues, Total Leadership participants first write about who is important, why they matter, and what those mutual expectations look and feel like. In the sessions devoted to preparation for the dialogues, we analyze these expectations and try to see how they influence each other; how they are interdependent in a social system that one can influence.

For many, though certainly not all, these stakeholder dialogues produce both a richer grasp of mutual expectations and the discovery of creative solutions that ultimately result in the reducing stress. More often than not, after these candid conversations people realize they were inaccurate about what they thought others, including their parents, actually expected of them. Usually, there’s more support and acceptance than was feared. This realization leads to better stress management.

For instance, one participant felt guilty because he was not in frequent enough contact with his mother, and this feeling sometimes intruded on his ability to focus on work. In conversation with her, he found that what really mattered to her was not that they speak more often but, rather, that he valued her opinion about his life choices; an adjustment that was easy enough for him to make by demonstrating greater curiosity through questions about her point of view on the occasions when they did talk. As a result, they both felt better about their relationship, and he was less distracted in the office.

Following these dialogues, relief generally ensues and doors open to new possibilities. It’s not uncommon, for example, for people to realize they do not have to follow the traditions held dear by their parents, or, in other instances, to find new ways of sharing responsibility with siblings for aging parents that produce greater harmony among brothers and sisters, which result in less disruption on work.

In one case, a man in his fifties came to realize after dialogues with his parents and his brothers (with whom he had not been close for a while) how important it was for him now to devote a substantial amount of time to speaking with his brothers about his parents’ physical decline and spiritual needs as they approached the end of life. The upshot was an explicit commitment to sharing the burdens of care and a plan for doing so that brought them together in a way that produced in him a deeper, more meaningful connection to his parents and his brothers. This in turn generated a sense of calm that helped him better manage the intense demands of his role as a high-powered CTO.

Even if specific routines and actions don’t change, greater mutual understanding can have a tangible impact. For instance, a physician and researcher in her thirties was in a same-sex relationship that she had kept hidden from her parents. (Hiding the relationship was possible because she was living in the U.S. and they were still in Europe, her place of origin.) She decided to come out to her parents, in part because she believed she needed to be more openly communicative in many important relationships in her life, including not only her parents, but her partner and the research assistants in her lab. Soon after she told her parents about her sexual orientation, and they then reaffirmed their love for her, she reported a change in the quality of her work with her staff that she attributed to feeling more confident and better able to build trust with them. (This accords with research Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Karen Sumberg have conducted on closeted versus out employees and that Kenji Yoshino and Christie Smith have done on the costs of “covering.”)

Coming to terms with what you choose to accept and what you aim to try to change in your relationship with your parents – whether it’s about whom you love, where you live, or whose approbation really matters to you – can create new paths forward not only in your family life, but in your work and career too. No matter how old you are, it’s never too late to explore the realistic steps you can take to lead the life you want.